I still feel your clear gaze/your final words/if it is allowed/ I will be watching over you/your eyes saw everything/wonder how you saw how you knew/eyes/ we’d say/in the back of your head/restless/ searching/ I drive round many strangely curved roads/ watch the greens you loved fly by/think I feel a cool clear light everywhere I wander/

Women of valor/call the role/aunts godmothers cousins teachers pastors friends sisters sisters mothering in all your ways/I remember you/honor you/in the invisible world/ honor your name as blessing/in the vale of tears and delight/hold you before generations/cry out/see the beauty and the power/women of valor/these are the ones/keeping the lamp shining bright/until we get home

There is a certain look of love/I have seen it survive calamity/seen it lie nascent in the dark/seen it refuse to die in the face of hopelessness/felt its power in whispered testimonial at the maw of transit/there is a certain look to that love/ stronger than any curve or cut in this life/or in that dying

I like to smooth my hand over the warm nubbly rug/thinking every stitch was touched by your beloved fingers/twisted gently but firmly into a pattern of goodness/our lives and loves stand in the spaces you left/between/the fabric you wove incessantly/we shall never cease to praise

Double gazed/brings a certain thickness/of knowing/there is always another way to look/directionality/another layer to excavate/dimensionality/another interconnected pain to feel/yet all balanced on the eternal creature’s kind

The gift sometimes changes the giver/sometimes changes the gifted/and though never used/often haunts the edges of mind/an apology for lives of love never lived/a reason for never having been in your life/a gift asking to be forgiven/to be prayed for/to grasp the weight of the bitter cup of grudge/so treasured/as all the love a lifetime/a teacup may hold

Angels we call friends/family of choice/they will carry our burdens/bring light to our disaster/bind up our wounds with the strongest bandage of prayer/bond of love/carry my starlight and my shade

Fabric of clouds/stretched luxuriantly/with brooding lazy texture/providing cover/a tapestry of possibilities/an unending scrolling landscape/look again/we are not the only needles/piercing the skies

Crystal/rose quartz/amethyst jagged but lovely/even a stone has a story/even a rock sings a song of beauty/all creation reflects God’s unfailing love and bounty

What if/original sin/is wanting to know something/God doesn’t/know my worth is better/than that other/the thing God doesn’t know/is anything but perfect love/wander far from that paradise if you insist